Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:17857
Return-Path: <jrhernandez05@gmail.com>
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Delivered-To: mailing list internals@lists.php.net
Received: (qmail 35519 invoked by uid 1010); 12 Aug 2005 03:50:14 -0000
Delivered-To: ezmlm-scan-internals@lists.php.net
Delivered-To: ezmlm-internals@lists.php.net
Received: (qmail 35504 invoked from network); 12 Aug 2005 03:50:14 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO lists.php.net) (127.0.0.1)
  by localhost with SMTP; 12 Aug 2005 03:50:14 -0000
X-Host-Fingerprint: 65.2.7.193 adsl-2-7-193.mia.bellsouth.net  
Received: from ([65.2.7.193:4698] helo=localhost.localdomain)
	by pb1.pair.com (ecelerity 2.0 beta r(6323M)) with SMTP
	id C2/E7-33075-57C1CF24 for <internals@lists.php.net>; Thu, 11 Aug 2005 23:50:13 -0400
Message-ID: <C2.E7.33075.57C1CF24@pb1.pair.com>
To: internals@lists.php.net
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 23:50:08 -0400
Lines: 43
User-Agent: KNode/0.8.1
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit
X-Posted-By: 65.2.7.193
Subject: Allow functions in namespaces?
From: jrhernandez05@gmail.com (Jessie Hernandez)

Right now, my patch is complete as respects classes inside namespaces,
simple import, namespace imports, etc. I just made a few changes locally to
see how feasible it was to allow functions inside namespaces, and it was
actually very simple. Like classes, the functions internally are prefixed
with the namespace name and a colon, e.g.:

<?php
namespace test_ns
{
    function test_func
    {
        echo "hello!\n";
    }
}

test_func(); // generates an error, 'test_func' does not exist

test_ns:test_func(); // prints "hello!"
?>


I haven't done anything with functions as regards imports, and I think it
would be difficult/useless to do so. Simple imports might be easy, but what
about namespace imports? There is no such concept as __autoload for
functions, so namespace imports for functions would be discarded. Also, if
you import foo:bar, you don't know if this is a function or a class. The
former syntax of "import function/class foo from bar" would need to be
used, and this syntax was very ugly IMHO.

So, I ask, would it be useful to have functions inside namespaces and only
use it as above? Imports would only work for classes, and the only change
would be that you can reference functions with a colon (of course, just
like classes, you cannot declare a function name with a colon, only
reference it).

Let me know what you guys think. My Beta 2 patch is working great as it is,
and I suspect the majority of the users who want namespaces is to simply
group/organize their classes anyways.


Regards,

Jessie Hernandez